


Unconventional

by GretchenSinister



Series: My Top 3 Rainbow Snowcone Fics [3]
Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: F/M, Flirting, Oblivious Jack, bird flirting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-02
Updated: 2020-01-02
Packaged: 2021-02-20 08:30:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22079080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GretchenSinister/pseuds/GretchenSinister
Summary: Original Prompt: "Tooth decides to court Jack… Bird style.She puffs out and shows off her plumage while doing a weird dance, brings Jack seeds and worms, builds him a nest, all sorts of things to show Jack that she’s a suitable mate.Jack, meanwhile, is a bit confused."Tooth realizes that she may have been rather unconventional in her courtship of Jack, though not for the same reasons Jack might think that. (Also, no worms are here.)
Relationships: Jack Frost/Toothiana (Guardians of Childhood)
Series: My Top 3 Rainbow Snowcone Fics [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1588039
Comments: 4
Kudos: 52
Collections: Rainbow Snowcone Short Fics





	Unconventional

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on Tumblr on 5/25/2016.

Jack smiled at Tooth as she broke off their conversation to dart here and there in the nearby air, her tail feathers spread in a wide fan even as she soared through a series of more complicated maneuvers than he’d yet seen from her. She’d been doing this with some regularity lately, and Jack could only assume that it was a sign that she enjoyed spending time with him and that she was getting more comfortable around him, even if she sometimes acted shy when she joined Jack for less ornamental flight.  
  
When she returned to his side today, however, she seemed rather frustrated with herself, and didn’t settle as close to Jack as she usually did. “Something up?” Jack asked.  
  
“No, I just…I don’t think I should have done that,” she said.  
  
“That flying? But it looked cool! I wouldn’t mind knowing how to do that myself! I don’t think I have that kind of precise control over the wind, not yet anyway.”  
  
Tooth perked up a little. “I could teach you!” she said, swooping around in front of Jack. “Yes! That would be better!”  
  
Better? It seemed like an odd word choice, but if Tooth was going to agree to something that meant he’d be spending more time with her, he wasn’t going to complain.  
  


* * *

  
  
After one of their flying lessons—Jack wasn’t sure what else to call them, though they were a lot more than the word lesson would imply, and he already knew how to fly pretty handily—Jack noticed that they were in a part of the Tooth Palace he hadn’t ever seen before. Within the branches of a large tree, he thought he saw something like a brightly-colored treehouse with gold trim; the fanciest tree house he had ever seen. “What is that?” He gestured to it with his staff. “It looks interesting, and I’ve never seen it before—whoa!”  
  
“It’s nothing, it’s not done, in fact nothing around here is finished, I shouldn’t have taken you here,” Tooth said, dragging Jack away by his sweatshirt. All the color had drained from her face.  
  
Afterwards, Jack thought and thought, and he couldn’t come up with anything that he thought Tooth would keep in a fancy tree house that would cause her to have that reaction when he got close to it.  
  


* * *

  
  
Not every visit was a flying lesson, and sometimes Jack and Tooth simply relaxed and talked. Usually, Tooth had some tea, or fresh fruit to offer. One day, though, Jack figured he must have made some sort of mistake when thanking her, because she kept bringing him more and more until he had a small mountain of fruit on the table before him. “Um, Tooth,” Jack finally said, as she looked for a spot to carefully balance another mango, “I don’t want to be ungrateful, but I think…this is enough.”  
  
“Oh!” Tooth dropped the mango and brought her hand to her mouth. “I didn’t realize! I—I shouldn’t have done all this, no definitely not. Definitely not.” She frowned, scooped up half the fruit, and put it in a basket at the side of the room. “Jack,” she said, settling again on the other side of the table. “I know I’ve not been myself lately, and you’ve been very polite not to mention anything, but I would like to…” She paused, and took a deep breath. “I would like to clarify that even though I have been acting very masculine, I am actually serious about my interest in you. I know I’m not expressing that interest the way I should, but it is the way that’s most comfortable to me, even though I’m a woman. If that puts you off, you can say it, and that will be that. But I wasn’t trying to make a joke out of courtship, or make any assumptions about what you might like.”  
  
“I—” Jack stopped, not sure what he had actually intended to say. He _was_ sure that his face was becoming vibrantly pink, though. “If I haven’t said anything, it’s because I haven’t understood that I was being told anything. I—I didn’t know that there was a courtship going on, unconventional or not.”  
  
“Oh,” said Tooth. “Oh. Well. It looks like I didn’t actually account for all the ways this could go wrong.”  
  
“Or, or maybe one of the ways it could go right?” Jack wished his voice was steadier, but that wasn’t likely to happen anytime soon, so he pressed on. “I mean, I think this is good news, I just didn’t know…could we start over, maybe? Maybe I could take you on a human sort of date?”  
  
“Oh!” Tooth began to turn a shade of pink Jack thought was much nicer than any he had ever turned. “Yes. Yes, I would like that. And you can do the flight.”  
  
“Oh, I don’t know,” Jack said, smiling shyly at her. “I don’t see any reason why you shouldn’t.”  
  
The smile she gave him then made him almost glad that he had been so oblivious before.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments from Tumblr:
> 
> mira-eyeteeth said: Aw, bird courting is so cute!


End file.
